A smarter, faster approach to mobile banking made accessible for all
Creating Multimoney’s refreshed banking app by offering new services and tech, so new customers could sign up and make transactions in under 2 minutes, dramatically increasing customer retention across multiple countries.
what we did
platforms
Meet Multimoney
Multimoney is a financial services company providing access to credit to underbanked customers across Latin America.
They wanted to enhance their app by adding revolving loans, a flexible finance tool for credit building. An app refresh was an ideal chance to expand their core business and offer new financial services.
This included granting access to bank accounts, debit cards, mobile payments, and cryptocurrency investments to those who hadn't previously engaged with a bank.
What we’re up against
The existing app experienced significant lag, with some API calls taking over a minute to respond.
They required an easy-to-use app that could be used across different markets and provide a satisfying user experience.
They were looking to scale and expand into new countries and regions, all without having to build a lot of brick-and-mortar locations.
They had the first-mover advantage, which meant we needed to build this incredibly quickly.
the strategy
Devising a plan
These are our 3 benchmarks for success:
Redesign the app to offer new products and services.
Develop a product strategy for each country based on their individual needs.
Dramatically improve the performance of the APIs to support this growth.
Understanding the unbanked
Address trust-related issues, especially when you’re using a digital interface instead of talking to a real person.
Advocate for unbanked customers
Build a simplified experience that provided the tools needed to help them manage and improve their credit.
Designed the UX to guide them through their finances
Providing a week-to-week planning system outlining payments, dates, and conditions clearly and in human terms to help drive new business and reduce help calls.
Designing for everyday banking
Give the people what they want
People should be able to use their money immediately after onboarding instead of access funds by withdrawing cash from an ATM.
People would like to request loans without having to visit a physical location.
New countries, different rules
To accommodate every country’s needs, we created a modular design system that could be reconfigured easily. This kept the apps similar enough that they felt cohesive, yet able to accommodate local needs without changing in the codebase.
The Importance of KYC (Knowing Your Customer)
To keep everything in-app, we created a custom KYC flow for each country so we could comply with regulations while still handling everything digitally. In most markets, we were able to open accounts for new customers in just a few minutes.
Developing for scale
Updates, last-minute changes, local regulations. Multi-region products are known as nightmares for a reason.
Sure, you can create a few git branches and rebase on every release, but your Engineering team is going to grind to a halt due to some truly insane merge conflicts.
For Multimoney we kept things simple with one repository and an organized system of feature flags. This allowed us to tweak the apps for each country very quickly without introducing bugs or unnecessary libraries. They also allowed us to turn features on and off remotely (with a single click) whenever a central bank changed their regulations. Which they did. A lot. Usually on Fridays.
Building a new foundation
We discovered that many users who downloaded the original app thought it was broken, but it was slow.
Our first engineering goal was to review every API endpoint, and work with their infrastructure to reduce each request to the bare minimum.
When we were done, all critical requests took a few milliseconds to complete on a mobile network, which allowed us to build a fast, solid app on top.
React Native FTW
To ship quickly across both iOS
and Android we used React Native as our mobile framework. It optimizes the developer experience and lets teams use native libraries as needed — necessary for NFC payments and integrating multiple KYC vendors for each market.
The app that’s faster than cash
The first design goal was to create virtual debit cards that allowed people to pay directly from the app.
There isn’t a lot of support for Apple and Google Pay in these markets, so we emulated NFC chips in debit cards to ensure it would work on every card reader.
What happened next
Instant payments
New customers were able to get onboarded and make their first in-app payment in under 2 minutes.
Happier customers
There was a dramatic increase in conversion rates, engagement and retention, also helping improve ratings from 2 to 4 stars.
A solid foundation
We eliminated app crashes and started doing weekly releases instead of 6-month ones, thanks to more reliable infrastructure.
Senior Product Manager
Multimoney"Working with Aerolab not only allowed us to ensure a world-class product design for our MVP but also enabled us to convey an agile and iterative mindset and establish a culture focused on customer feedback and experimentation."